Heena Sharma Blog

High-quality diet, defined by low intake of animal foods such as red meat, and high intake of plant foods such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains, coupled with a reduced intake of sweetened beverages, could be associated with reduced risk of diabetes, a recent study suggests. Diet is an important risk factor for type 2 diabetes . Studying the impact of individual food items, however, does not account for the synergistic effects of diverse foods consumed together. Hence, scientists have turned increasing attention to studying the overall dietary patterns in order to capture the combined effect of a variety of food groups. Finding of the study were published in the Journal of American Journal of Epidemiology Five predetermined dietary patterns originating in Western populations, i.e. the alternative Mediterranean diet (aMED, an international adaptation of the eponymous diet), the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010), the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension...

Weight might be the cause for one-fourth of asthma cases in kids with obesity, a recent study suggests. The research, which studied health data from more than 500,000 children in the United States, suggested that about 10 percent of all kids aged between 2 to 17 with asthma , might have avoided the illness by maintaining a healthy weight. The findings are published in the Journal of Pediatrics. " Asthma is the number one chronic disease in children and some of the causes such as genetics and viral infections during childhood are things we can't prevent. Obesity may be the only risk factor for childhood asthma that could be preventable. This is another piece of evidence that keeping kids active and at a healthy weight is important," said Jason E. Lang, lead author of the study. For the retrospective study, researchers analyzed data for 507,496 children from more than 19 million doctor's visits at six major children's health centers. Those cl...

Sleep length can be associated with an increased risk of fractures, a recent study has suggested. According to the findings of the research, compared with women who slept seven to eight hours each night, women who slept for 5 hours or 10 hours had about 25 per cent increased odds of experiencing recurrent falls. Short sleep was associated with an increased risk of all fractures , and upper limb, lower limb, and central body fractures, but not with an increased risk of hip fractures. The findings of the study are published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The analysis included 157,306 women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative, with an average follow-up time of 7.6 years for falls and 12.0 years for fractures. The annualized rate of recurrent fall events was 10.6 percent among women reporting 5 hours of sleep per night, 7.0 percent among women sleeping seven to eight hours per night, and 11.8 percent among women sleeping 10 hours per night. ...

Pregnant women are more likely to smoke if they live in areas with a number of cigarette selling shops, according to a new study. Conducted by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, the findings appeared in the journal Tobacco Control . Pregnant women living in Scottish neighbourhoods with the highest availability of tobacco products are 70 per cent more likely to smoke than if they live in areas where no tobacco is sold, researchers say. The team examined maternity records - which include details of expectant mothers' smoking behaviour - for the more than 700,000 births in Scotland between 2000 and 2015. They focused on women who had at least two babies during the period and moved neighbourhood between pregnancies. The data was analysed in tandem with information on all the tobacco outlets in Scotland. Researchers found that the risk of women smoking during a pregnancy increased in line with the local availability of tobacco products. Read Complete Articl...